CALL ME MAGGIE

society of control

  • Lonely Nation, Touch Starved People

    Americans exist in a sociocultural habitat where touching is discouraged. Yet we are primates, embodied beings evolved to live through, with, and in our senses. And tactility or touching as a sense makes us feel connected–to each other, to our… Continue reading

    Lonely Nation, Touch Starved People

  • Coordination, Subordination, and Exordination

    Yesterday in our class, the discussion led me to talk for a little bit about a distinction originally made by Marcuse, I believe, regarding soft versus hard totalitarianism. I extended this description out to all manner of group structures that lead… Continue reading

    Coordination, Subordination, and Exordination

  • The High Priests of Capitalism

    Richard D. Wolff takes some time to describe how traditional intellectuals and economic theorists keep the superstructure mostly clear of those who disagree. Highly placed economic theorists usually evaluate the system prevailing in their societies very positively and construct celebratory… Continue reading

    The High Priests of Capitalism

  • Heterotopia of Facebook

    Michel Foucault first introduced the notion of heterotopia in the preface of his 1966 book Les Mots et les Choses (translated in 1970 as The Order of Things), and further developed the concept in his famous lecture ‘Of Other Spaces’… Continue reading

    Heterotopia of Facebook

  • Expulsion of the White Working Class

    This exemplifies how the superstructure dominates every aspect of our lives. The neoliberal policies of the two plutocratic parties, Democrat and Republican, keep folks separated along racial lines so that the bottom 50% of citizens will not communicate with each other.… Continue reading

    Expulsion of the White Working Class

  • Is the age of globalization also a new era for protests?

    A spate of studies and meta-analysis in recent years depict how large-scale citizen mobilisations have been intensifying for more than a decade, reaching a new peak in the past five years. According to the conclusion of an extensive study examining the complexities of… Continue reading

    Is the age of globalization also a new era for protests?

  • Hard terror, soft terror

    The acts of radicalized “Jihadists” often hits our front pages and tablet news apps. It is clearly brutal. It is clearly intolerant. It clearly appalling. Yet alongside all of this clear terroristic activity are other forms of violence and inhospitable behavior.… Continue reading

  • The richest 62

    There are 62 super-billionaires at the top of the top of the 1% who are wealthier than half of all other people combined. Leading figures from Pope Francis to Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, have called for… Continue reading

  • Bank Bail-Ins Begin

    If you have more money in bank accounts than I have–or probably ever will have–you might want to learn what the difference is between bank bail-outs and bank bail-ins. Very much worth a couple of reads. Over-extraction of all capital… Continue reading

  • Pax Coffea – the role of coffee in troubling times

    An essay very much worth the read from barista and coffee specialist Peter Giuliano: …how we can use coffee- which is after all the subject dearer to me than any other- as a tool in the fight for good and for… Continue reading

  • forgetful, forgotten control

    There are no first or third worlds. No developed or underdeveloped nations. There is only convergence to and divergence from the Society of Control. The Society of Control is a series of Alpha-Cities–New York, Tokyo, London, Hong Kong, Paris, etc.–interconnected… Continue reading

    forgetful, forgotten control

  • #atemporality

    Really great youtube channel to which the buddy-friend-guy introduced me. Continue reading

    #atemporality

  • ‘Straight Outta Compton’: Rare Biopic

    A rare film because it does not continue the tradition of celebrating a white man. Kudos to the industry power of Dr. Dre and Ice Cube. It remains to be seen how much the film will touch on the existential struggles… Continue reading

  • How Uber and the Gig Economy Are Making Voters as Disposable as Temp Workers

    Temp politics is an outgrowth of the sweeping transformation of economic, social and political life over the past 35 years to fit the demands of global capital for “flexible,” nonunion labor markets that fuel growth in monopoly profits, irrespective of… Continue reading

  • Why are the most important people in media reading The Awl?

    All swept along by algorithms of persistent evolution. A nice companion piece to the blog entry from Philosophical Disquisitions on the import–philosophically and sociologically–for thinking the importance of algorithms in our lives… But Herrman and Buchanan are wary of the distorting… Continue reading

  • #blacklivesmatter Socio-economic conditions across the US

    According to Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, Senior Director of the Economic Department at the NAACP Financial Freedom Center, “It’s one thing to end segregation, but it’s another thing to talk about billions of dollars of investment.” When the United States invested in… Continue reading

  • #Fracketeering: Solutions for the Society of Control

    My colleague Adam Briggle has been very active intellectually and politically with local bans on fracking in my hometown of Denton. In a dialog we had recently, I mentioned to him that fracking bans–and the ban on bans–could be read differently… Continue reading

    #Fracketeering: Solutions for the Society of Control

  • Fracking and environmental (in)justice in a Texas city

    Ecological Economics publishes a peer reviewed econo,if and environmental justice study of shale gas development in my hometown of Denton, Texas. The article is co-authored by my  colleagues Matthew Fry, Jordan Kincaid and Adam Briggle. You can access the full text for… Continue reading